alt Hacker News0) Protectionism- TikTok is eating Meta's lunch. Meta can't make a social app as good as TikTok in the same way GM can't make a car as good a value as BYD.
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This is just a different bias on point 3, reciprocity. BYD benefits from state subsidies and state sponsored intellectual property theft on an industrial scale. See again, point 3.
That certainly plays some role in why domestic social media companies haven't stirred up resistance to the ban, but is more like #50 in terms of geopolitical strategy.
The domestic companies lost some attention share to TikTok sure, and a ban or domestic sale would generally be in their interests, but it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies -- presently and in forecasts -- even while it was "eating their lunch"
I won’t say that isn’t relevant; when you’re building a coalition you don’t say no to allies. But it was a cherry on top of a well-baked pie. Not a foundational motivation.
>Meta can't make a psyop as dangerous
We should treat social media as the addictive, mind altering drug it is, and stop acting like a free market saturation of them is a good thing.
China having their more potent mind control app pointed at the brains of hundreds of millions of people is not something to celebrate.
Much like Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
This is not new behavior between the two countries, the only thing new is the direction. US is finally waking up to the foreign soft power being exercised inside our own country, and it isn't benefiting us.